Sayyid dynasty, rulers of India’s Delhi sultanate (c. 1414–51) as successors of the Tughluq dynasty until displaced by the Afghan Lodīs. This family claimed to be sayyids, or descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. The central authority of the Delhi sultanate had been fatally weakened by the invasion of the Turkic conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) and his capture of Delhi in 1398. For the next 50 years, north India was virtually divided between a number of military chiefs, the strongest of whom were the Sharqī sultans of Jaunpur.

Tomb of the Sayyid emperor Muhammad Shah, Delhi.

Arian Zwegers (CC-BY-2.0) (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

The first Sayyid ruler of Delhi was Khizr Khan (reigned 1414–21), who had been governor of the Punjab. He and his three successors occupied themselves in raids to collect revenue, barely maintaining themselves against the Sharqī sultans to the east and the Khokars to the northwest. Khizr’s successor, Mubārak Shah, had some success, but, after the latter’s assassination in 1434, his two successors, Muḥammad Shah and ʿĀlam Shah, proved incapable. ʿĀlam Shah abandoned Delhi for Badaun in 1448, and three years later Bahlūl Lodī, already ruler of the Punjab, seized Delhi and inaugurated the Lodī, the last dynasty of the Delhi sultanate.

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principal Muslim sultanate in north India from the 13th to the 16th century. Its creation owed much to the campaigns of Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Sām (Muḥammad of Ghūr; brother of Sultan Ghiyā s̄ al-Dīn of Ghūr) and his...

1336 Kesh, near Samarkand, Transoxania [now in Uzbekistan] February 19, 1405 Otrar, near Chimkent [now Shymkent, Kazakhstan] Turkic conqueror, chiefly remembered for the barbarity of his conquests from India and Russia to the Mediterranean Sea and for the cultural achievements of his dynasty.

city and national capital territory, north-central India. The city of Delhi actually consists of two components: Old Delhi, in the north, the historic city; and New Delhi, in the south, since 1947 the capital of India, built in the first part of the 20th century as the capital of British India.